Judging from some of the recent news headlines, one might get the impression that southern Florida is setting records for cold weather. Nothing could be further from the truth. The winter of 2009-2010 was the coldest since 1940, and there was another cold outbreak in December 2010, but since then we have had unusually warm…
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For a number of years now, Florida citrus has been pummeled by disease. Citrus canker appeared first, only to be supplanted by a newer scourge, citrus greening. Orange production alone cratered from a peak of 244 million 90-lb. boxes in 1997-98 to 68.36 million (or 68.75 million, depending upon the source) in 2016-17. But for…
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We’re already well into the 2017 hurricane season, and so far southern Florida has been spared. But recent reassessments by the various tropical weather monitoring entities have led them to predict a higher probability of storm activity than they originally foresaw. Consequently, if you still have some preparations to make, we at Richard Lyons’ Nursery…
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A month ago in this space, we reported our expectation that plants being grown in southern Florida would be prone to disease problems if the unusual pattern of significant winter rainfall were to continue. Well, the pattern has continued, and local plants are definitely showing the strain. What can homeowners do to prevent the outbreak…
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The UF-IFAS/Miami-Dade County Extension Office – IFAS for short – publishes a very interesting and informative quarterly newsletter, Miami Green Bytes. Among subjects addressed in the Winter 2015 issue is the influence of El Niño, which so far is more than living up to its advance billing as a major weather-maker. Generally speaking, most of…
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